LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



LMERICA. 



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PAX VOBISCUM 



y/' BY 

HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., LL.D. 



With Illustrations by Frank M. Gregory 




lEW YORK 

JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS 

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TROW'3 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. 



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is easy, and my burdei 
is light." 



CONTENTS 



Preface, . • • • 

Pax Vobiscum, . • • • 
Effects Require Causes, 
What Yokes are for, 
How Fruits Grow, 
The True Vine, 



PAGE 

5 

II 
17 
37 
. 45 
54 





I 



R\X VOBlSCUii 

' I HEARD the Other morning a ser- 
mon by a distinguished preacher upon 
" Rest." It was full of beautiful thoughts ; but 
when I came to ask myself, ''How does he say 
I can get Rest?" there was no answer. The 

sermon was sincerely meant to be practical, yet 1 

j 

it contained no experience that seemed to me to 
be tangible, nor any advice which could help me to find 
the thing itself as I went about the world that after- 
noon. Yet this omission of the only important problem 
was not the fault of the preacher. The whole popular 
religion is in the twilight here. And when pressed for 



12 FAX VOBISCUM. 



really working specifics for the experiences with which 
it deals, it falters, and seems to lose itself in mist. 

The want of connection between the great words 
of religion and every-day life has bewildered and dis- 
couraged all of us. Christianity possesses the no- 
blest words in the language ; its literature overflows 
with terms expressive of the greatest and happi- 
est moods which can fill the soul of man. Rest, 
Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light — these words occur 
with such persistency in hymns and prayers than an 
observer might think they formed the staple of Chris- 
tian experience. But on coming to close quarters 
with the actual life of most of us, how surely would 
he be disenchanted. I do not think we ourselves are 
aware how much our religious life is made up of 
phrases ; how much of what we call Christian experi- 
ence is only a dialect of the Churches, a mere reli- 
gious phraseology with almost nothing behind it in 
what we really feel and know. 

To some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences 



PEACE BE WITH YOU. 1 3 

seem further away thaa when we took the first steps 
in the Christian life. That life has not opened out 
as we had hoped ; we do not regret our religion, but 
we are disappointed with it. There are times, per- 
haps, when wandering notes from a diviner music 
stray into our spirits ; but these experiences come at 
few and fitful moments. We have no sense of pos- 
session in them. When they visit us, it is a sur- 
prise. When they leave us, it is without explana- 
tion. When we wish their return, we do not know 
how to secure it. 

All which points to a religion without solid base, 
and a poor and flickering life. It means a great 
bankruptcy in those experiences which give Christi- 
anity its personal solace and make it attractive to 
the world, and a great uncertainty as to any remed}-. 
It is as if we knew everything about health — ex- 
cept the way to get it. 

I am quite sure that the difficulty does not lie 
In the fact that men are not in earnest. This is 



14 PAX V0BISCU2I. 



simply not the fact. All around us Christians are 
wearing themselves out in trying to be better. The 
amount of spiritual longing in the world — in the 
hearts of unnumbered thousands of men and women 
in whom we should never suspect it ; among the 
wise and thoughtful ; among the young and gay, who 
seldom assuage and never betray their thirst — this is 
one of the most wonderful and touching facts of life. 
It is not more heat that is needed, but more light ; 
not more force, but a wiser direction to be given to 
very real energies already there. 

The Address which follows is offered as a humble 
contribution to this problem, and in the hope that it 
may help some who are " seeking Rest and finding 
none" to a firmer footing on one great, solid, simple 
principle which underlies not the Christian experi- 
ences alone, but all experiences, and all life. 

What Christian experience wants is thread, a verte- 
bral column, method. It is impossible to believe that 
there is no remedy for its unevenness and dishevel- 



PEACE BE WITH YOU. 



15 



ment, or that the remedy is a secret. The idea, also, 
that some few men, by happy chance or happier tem- 
perament, have been given the secret — as if there 
were some sort of knack or trick of it — is wholly 
incredible. Religion must ripen its fruit for every 
temperament ; and the way even into its highest 
heights must be by a gateway through which the 
peoples of the world may pass. 

I shall try to lead up to this gateway by a very 
familiar path. But as that path is strangely unfre- 
quented, and even unknown, where it passes into the 
religious sphere, I must dwell for a moment on the 
commonest of commonplaces. 




yy 




Nothing that happens in the world happens by 
chance. God is a God of order. Everything is ar- 
ranged upon definite principles, and never at ran- 

2 



1 8 FAX VOBISCUM. 



dom. The Avorld, even the religious world, is governed 
by law. Character is governed by law. Happiness is 
governed by law. The Christian experiences are gov- 
erned by law. Men, forgetting this, expect Rest, Joy, 
Peace, Faith to drop into their souls from the air 
like snow or rain. But in point of fact they do not 
do so ; and if they did they would no less have their 
origin in previous activities and be controlled by nat- 
ural laws. Rain and snow do drop from the air, but 
not without a long previous history. They are the 
mature effects of former causes. Equally so are Rest, 
and Peace, and Joy. They, too, have each a previous 
history. Storms and winds and calms are not acci- 
dents, but are brought about by antecedent circum- 
stances. Rest and Peace are but calms in man's 
inward nature, and arise through causes as definite 
and as inevitable. 

Realize it thoroughly : it is a micthodical not an 
accidental world. If a housewife turns out a good 
cake, it is the result of a sound receipt, carefully ap- 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 1 9 



plied. She cannot mix the assigned ingredients and 
fire them for the appropriate time without producing 
the result. It is not she who has made the cake ; it 
is nature. She brings related things together; sets 
causes at work ; these causes bring about the result. 
She is not a creator, but an intermediary. She does 
not expect random causes to produce specific effects 
— random ingredients would only produce random 
cakes. So it is in the making of Christian experi- 
ences. Certain lines are followed ; certain effects are 
the result. These effects cannot but be the re- 
sult. But the result can never take place without 
the previous cause. To expect results without 
antecedents is to expect cakes without ingredients. 
That impossibility is precisely the almost universal 
expectation. 

Now what I mainly wish to do is to help you 
firmly to grasp this simple principle of Cause and 
Effect in the spiritual world. And instead of apply- 
ing the principle generally to each of the Christian 



20 PAX VOBISCUM. 



experiences in turn, I shall examine its application to 
one in some little detail. The one I shall select is 
Rest. x\nd I think any one who follows the applica- 
tion in this single instance will be able to apply it 
for himself to all the others. 

Take such a sentence as this : iVfrican explorers 
are subject to fevers which cause restlessness and de- 
lirium. Note the expression, *' cause restlessness." 
Restlessness has a cause. Clearly, then, any one who 
Avished to get rid of restlessness .would proceed at 
once to deal with the cause. If that were not re- 
moved, a doctor might prescribe a hundred things, 
and all might be taken in turn, without producing 
the least effect. Things are so arranged in the orig- 
inal planning of the world that certain effects must 
follow certain causes, and certain causes must be 
abolished before certain effects can be removed. Cer- 
tain parts of Africa are inseparably linked with the 
physical experience called fever ; this fever is in turn 
infallibly linked with a mental experience called 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 21 



restlessness and delirium. To abolish the mental 
experience the radical method would be to abolish 
the physical experience, and the way of abolishing 
the physical experience would be to abolish Africa, 
or to cease to go there. Now this holds good 
for all other forms of Restlessness. Every other 
form and kind of Restlessness in the world has 
a definite cause, and the particular kind of Rest- 
lessness can only be removed by removing the al- 
lotted cause. 

All this is also true of Rest. Restlessness has a 
cause: must not Rest have a cause? Necessarily. If 
it were a chance world we would not expect this ; but, 
being a methodical world, it cannot be otherwise. 
Rest, physical rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, every 
kind of rest has a cause, as certainly as restlessness. 
Now causes are discriminating. There is one kind of 
cause for every particular effect, and no other ; and if 
one particular effect is desired, the corresponding 
cause must be set in motion. It is no use proposing 



22 FAX VOBISCUM. 



finely devised schemes, or going through general pious 
exercises in the hope that somehow Rest will come. 
The Christian life is not casual but causal. All na- 
ture is a standing protest against the absurdity of 
expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any effects, 
without the employment of appropriate causes. 
The Great Teacher dealt what ought to have been 
the final blow to this infinite irrelevancy by a single 
question, " Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs 
of thistles?" 

Why, then, did the Great Teacher not educate His 
followers fully? Why did He not tell us, for exam- 
ple, how such a thing as Rest might be obtained ? 
The answer is, that He did. But plainly, explicitly, 
in so many words ? Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many 
words. He assigned Rest to its cause, in words with 
which each of us has been familiar from his earliest 
childhood. 

He begins, you remember — for you at once know 
the passage I refer to — almost as if Rest could be 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 23 

had without any cause : " Come unto Me," He says, 
"and I will give you Rest." 

Rest, apparently, was a favour to be bestowed ; men 
had but to come to Him ; He would give it to every 
applicant. But the next sentence takes that all back. 
The qualification, indeed, is added instantaneously. For 
what the first sentence seemed to give was next thing 
to an impossibility. For how, in a literal sense, can 
Rest be given ? One could no more give away Rest 
than he could give away Laughter. We speak of 
"causing" laughter, which we can do; but we cannot 
give it away. When we speak of giving pain, we 
know perfectly well we cannot give pain away. And 
when we aim at giving pleasure, all that we do is to 
arrange a set of circumstances in such a way as that 
these shall cause pleasure. Of course there is a sense, 
and a very wonderful sense, in which a Great Person- 
ality breathes upon all who come within its influence 
an abiding peace and trust. Men can be to other 
men as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. 



24 FAX VOBISCUM. 

]\Iuch more Christ; much more Christ as Perfect 
Man ; much more still as Saviour of the world. But 
it is not this of which I speak. When Christ said 
He would give men Rest, He meant simply that He 
would put them in the way of it. By no act of con- 
veyance would, or could. He make over His own Rest 
to them. He could give them His receipt for it. 
That was all. But He would not make it for them ; 
for one thing, it was not in His plan to make it for 
them ; for another thing, men were not so planned 
that it could be made for them ; and for yet another 
thing, it was a thousand times better that they should 
make it for themselves. 

That this is the meaning becomes obvious from the 
wording of the second sentence : " Learn of Me and 
ye shall find Rest." Rest, that is to say, is not a 
thing that can be given, but a thing to be acquired. 
It comes not by an act, but by a process. It is not 
to be found in a happy hour, as one finds a treasure ; 
but slowly, as one finds knowledge. It could indeed 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 



be no more found in a moment than could knowl- 
edge. A soil has to be prepared for it. Like a fine 
fruit, it will grow in one climate and not in another ; 
at one altitude and not at another. Like all growths 
it will have an orderly development and mature by 
slow degrees. 

The nature of this slow process Christ clearly defines 
when He says we are to achieve Rest by learning. 
" Learn of ]Me," He says, " and ye shall find rest to 
your souls." Now consider the extraordinary origin- 
ality of this utterance. How novel the connection 
between these two words, " Learn " and " Rest ? " 
How few of us have ever associated them — ever 
thought that Rest was a thing to be learned ; ever 
laid ourselves out for it as we would to learn a 
language ; ever practised it as we would practise 
the violin ? Does it not show how entirely new 
Christ's teaching still is to the world, that so old 
and threadbare an aphorism should still be so lit- 
tle applied ? The last thing most of us would have 



26 PAX VOBISCUM. 



thought of would have been to associate Rest with 
Work. 

What must one work at ? What is that which if 
duly learned will find the soul of man in Rest ? 
Christ answers without the least hesitation. He speci- 
fies two things — Meekness and Lowliness. " Learn of 
Me," He says, " for I am meek and lowly in heart." 
Now these two things are not chosen at random. To 
these accomplishments, in a special way, Rest is at- 
tached. Learn these, in short, and you have already 
found Rest. These as they stand are direct causes 
of Rest ; will produce it at once ; cannot but pro- 
duce it at once. And if you think for a single 
moment, you will see how this is necessarily so, for 
causes are never arbitrary, and the connection between 
antecedent and consequent here and everywhere lies 
deep in the nature of things. 

What is the connection, then ? I answer by a fur- 
ther question. What are the chief causes of Unrest f 
If you know yourself, you will answer Pride, Selfish- 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 2/ 

ness, Ambition. As you look back upon the past 
years of your life, is it not true that its unhappiness 
has chiefly come from the succession of personal morti- 
fications and almost trivial disappointments which the 
intercourse of life has brought you ? Great trials come 
at lengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them ; 
but it is the petty friction of our every-day life with 
one another, the jar of business or of work, the dis- 
cord of the domestic circle, the collapse of our ambi- 
tion, the crossing of our will or the taking down of 
our conceit, which make inward peace impossible. 
Wounded vanity, then, disappointed hopes, unsatisfied 
selfishness — these are the old, vulgar, universal sources 
of man's unrest. 

Now it is obvious why Christ pointed out as the 
two chief objects for attainment the exact opposites of 
these. To Meekness and Lowliness these things 
simply do not exist. They cure unrest by making it 
impossible. These remedies do not trifle with surface ' 
symptoms ; they strike at once at removing causes. 



28 FAX VOBISCUM. 



The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred life can be re- 
moved at once by learning Sleekness and Lowliness of 
heart. He who learns them is forever proof against it. 
He lives henceforth a charmed life. Christianity is a 
fine inoculation, a transfusion of healthy blood into an 
anemic or poisoned soul. Xo fever can attack a per- 
fectly sound body ; no fever of unrest can disturb a 
soul which has breathed the air or learned the ways 
of Christ. Men sigh for the wina;s of a dove that 

o o 

they may fly away and be at Rest. But flying away 
will not help us. " The Kingdom of God is ivitliin 
yotiJ' We aspire to the top to look for Rest ; it lies 
at the bottom. Water rests only when it gets to the 
lowest place. So do men. Hence, be lowly. The 
man who has no opinion of himself at all can never 
be hurt if others do not acknowledge him. Hence, 
be meek. He Avho is without expectation cannot fret 
if nothing comes to him. It is self-evident that 
these things are so. The lowly man and the meek 
man are really above all other men, above all other 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 29 

things. They dominate the world because they do 
not care for it. The miser does not possess gold, 
gold possesses him. But the meek possess it. " The 
meek," said Christ, " inherit the earth." They do not 
buy it; they do not conquer it; but they inherit it. 

There are people who go about the world looking 
out for slights, and they are necessarily miserable, for 
they find them at every turn — especially the imagin- 
ary ones. One has the same pity for such men as 
for the very poor. They are the morally illiterate. 
They have had no real education, for they have never 
learned how to live. Few men know how to live. 
We grow up at random, carrying into mature life the 
merely animal methods and motives which we had as 
little children. And it does not occur to us that all 
this must be changed ; that much of it must be re- 
versed ; that life is the finest of the Fine Arts ; that 
it has to be learned with life-long patience, and that 
the years of our pilgrimage are all too short to mas- 
ter it triumphantly. 



30 FAX VOBISCUM. 



Yet this is what Christianity is for — to teach men 
the Art of Life. And its whole curriculum lies in 
one word — •" Learn of Me." Unlike most education, 
this is almost purely personal ; it is not to be had 
from books or lectures or creeds or doctrines. It is a 
study from the life. Christ never said much in mere 
words about the Christian graces. He lived them,* 
He was them. Yet we do not merely copy Him. 
^ We learn His art by living with Him, like the old 
apprentices with their masters. 

Now we understand it all ? Christ's invitation to 
the weary and heavy-laden is a call to begin life over 
again upon a new principle — upon His own prin- 
ciple. " Watch My way of doing things," He says. 
" Follow Me. Take life as I take it. Be meek and 
lowly and you will find Rest." 

I do not say, remember, that the Christian life to 
every man, or to any man, can be a bed of roses. 
No educational process can be this. And perhaps if 
some men knew how much was involved in the 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 3 1 

simple " learn " of Christ, they would not enter His 
school with so irresponsible a heart. For there is 
not only much to learn, but much to unlearn. Many 
men never go to this school at all till their dis- 
position is already half ruined and character has 
taken on its fatal set. To learn arithmetic is dijEificult 
at fifty — much more to learn Christianity. To learn 
simply what it is to be meek and lowly, in the case 
of one who has had no lessons in that in childhood, 
may cost him half of Avhat he values most on earth. 
Do we realize, for instance, that the way of teaching 
humility is generally by humiliation ? There is 
probably no other school for it. When a man enters 
himself as a pupil in such a school it means a very 
great thing. There is much Rest there, but there is 
also much Work. 

I should be wrong, even though my theme is 
the brighter side, to ignore the cross and minimize 
the cost. Only it gives to the cross a more definite 
meaning, and a rarer value, to connect it thus direct- 



32 FAX VOBISCUM. 



\y and causally with the growth of the inner life. 
Our platitudes on the " benefits of af^iction " are 
usually about as vague as our theories of Christian 
Experience. " Somehow," we believe afifliction does 
us good. But it is not a question of " Some- 
how." The result is definite, calculable, necessary. It 
is under the strictest law of cause and effect. The 
first effect of losing one's fortune, for instance, is 
humiliation ; and the effect of humiliation, as we 
have just seen, is to make one humble ; and the 
effect of being humble is to produce Rest. It is a 
roundabout way, apparently, of producing Rest ; but 
Nature generally works by circular processes ; and it 
is not certain that there is any other way of becom- 
ing humble, or of finding Rest. If a man could make 
himself humble to order, it might simplify matters, 
but we do not find that this happens. Hence we 
must all go through the mill. Hence death, death 
to the lower self, is the nearest gate and the quickest 
road to life. 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 33 

Yet this is only half the truth. Christ's life out- 
wardly was one of the most troubled lives that was 
ever lived : Tempest and tumult, tumult and tem- 
pest, the waves breaking over it all the time till the 
worn body was laid in the grave. But the inner life 
was a sea of glass. The great calm was always 
there. At any moment you might have gone to "f 
Him and found Rest. And even when the blood- 
hounds were dogging him in the streets of Jerusalem, 
He turned to His disciples and offered them, as a 
last legacy, " My peace." Nothing ever for a mom^ent 
broke the serenity of Christ's life on earth. Mis- 
fortune could not reach Him ; He had no fortune. 
Food, raiment, money — fountain - heads of half the 
world's weariness — He simply did not care for; they 
played no part in His life ; He " took no thought " 
for them. It was impossible to affect Him by lower- • 
ing His reputation ; He had already made Himself of 
no reputation. He was dumb before insult. When 
He was reviled He reviled not again. In fact, there 



34 PAX VOBISCUM. 



was nothing that the world could do to Him that 
could ruffle the surface of His spirit. 

Such living, as mere living, is altogether unique. 
It is only when we see what it was in Him that we 
can know Avhat the word Rest means. It lies not in 
emotions, nor in the absence of emotions. It is not 
a hallowed feeling that comes over us in church. It 
is not something that the preacher has in his voice. 
It is not in nature, or in poetry, or in music — though 
in all these there is soothing. It is the mind at 
leisure from itself. It is the perfect poise of the 
soul ; the absolute adjustment of the inward man to 
the stress of all outward things ; the preparedness 
against every emergency ; the stability of assured con- 
victions ; the eternal calm of an invulnerable faith ; 
the repose of a heart set deep in God. It is the 
mood of the man who says, with Browning, " God's 
in His Heaven, all's well with the world." 

Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate 
his conception of rest. The first chose for his scene 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 35 



a still, lone lake among the far-off mountains. The 
second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, 
with a fragile birch-tree bending over the foam ; at 
the fork of a branch, almost wet with the cataract's 
spray, a robin sat on its nest. The first was only 
Stagnation ; the last was Rest. For in Rest there 
are always two elements — tranquillity and energy ; 
silence and turbulence ; creation and destruction ; fear- 
lessness and fearfulness. This it was in Christ. 

It is quite plain from all this that whatever else 
He claimed to be or to do, He at least knew how 
to live. All this is the perfection of living, of living 
in the mere sense of passing through the world in 
the best way. Hence His anxiety to communicate 
His idea of life to others. He came, He said, to 
give men life, true life, a more abundant life than 
they were living ; " the life," as a fine phrase in 
the Revised Version has it, " that is life indeed." 
This is what He himself possessed, and it was this 
which He offers to all mankind. And hence 



36 



PAX VO BIS CUM. 



His direct appeal for all to corae to Him who 
had not made much of life, who were weary 
and heavy-laden. These He would teach His se- 
cret. They, also, should know "the life that is life 
indeed." 




w ^. 





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fii^f'>iH:&s/ie£roi\ 



There is still one doubt to clear up. 
After the statement, " Learn of Me," Christ 
throws in the disconcerting qualification, 
" Take J/j/ yoke upon you and learn of Me." Why, 
if all this be true, does He call it a yoke ? Why, 
Avhile professing to give Rest, does He with the 
next breath whisper " burden " / Is the Christian 
life, after all, what its enemies take it for — an ad- 
ditional weight to the already great woe of life, 
some extra punctiliousness about duty, some painful 
devotion to observances, some heavy restriction and 
trammelling of all that is joyous and free in the 



38 FAX ro BIS CUM. 



world ? Is life not hard and sorrowful enough with- 
out being fettered with yet another yoke ? 

It is astounding how so glaring a misunderstanding 
of this plain sentence should ever have passed into 
currency. Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is 
really for? Is it to be a burden to the animal which 
wears it ? It is just the opposite. It is to make its 
burden light. Attached to the oxen in any other 
way than by a yoke, the plough would be intoler- 
able. Worked by means of a yoke, it is light. A 
yoke is not an instrument of torture; it is an instru- 
ment of mercy. It is not a malicious contrivance for 
making work hard ; it is a gentle device to make 
hard labour light. It is not meant to give pain, but 
to save pain. And yet men speak of the yoke of 
Christ as if it were a slavery, and look upon those 
who wear it as objects of compassion. For gener- 
ations we have had homilies on " The Yoke of 
Christ," some delighting in portraying its narrow 
exactions ; some seeking in these exactions the marks 



WHAT YOKES ARE EOR. 39 

of its divinity; others apologizing for it, and toning 
it down ; still others assuring us that, although it 
be very bad, it is not to be compared with the posi- 
tive blessings of Christianity. How many, especially 
among the young, has this one mistaken phrase 
driven forever away from the kingdom of God ? In- 
stead of making Christ attractive, it makes Him out 
a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty restrictions, call- 
ing for self-denial where none is necessary, making 
misery a virtue under the plea that it is the yoke of 
Christ, and happiness criminal because it now and 
then evades it. According to this conception. Chris- 
tians are at best the victims of a depressing fate ; 
their life is a penance ; and their hope for the next 
world purchased by a slow martyrdom in this. 

The mistake has arisen from taking the word " yoke " 
here in the same sense as in the expressions " under 
the yoke," or " wear the yoke in his youth." But in 
Christ's illustration it is not the jiigiun of the Roman 
soldier, but the simple " harness " or " ox-collar " of 



40 PAX VOBISCUM. 



the Eastern peasant. It is the literal wooden yoke 
which He, with His own hands in the carpenter shop, 
had probably often made. He knew the difference 
between a smooth yoke and a rough one, a bad fit 
and a good fit ; the difference also it made to the pa- 
tient animal which had to wear it. The rough yoke 
galled, and the burden was heavy ; the smooth yoke 
caused no pain, and the load was lightly drawn. The 
badly fitted harness was a misery ; the well-fitted col- 
lar was " easy.'' 

And what was the " burden " ? It was not some 
special burden laid upon the Christian, some unique 
infliction that they alone must bear. It was what all 
men bear. It was simply life, human life itself, the 
general burden of life which all must carry with them 
from the cradle to the grave. Christ saw that men 
took life painfully. To some it was a weariness, to 
others a failure, to many a tragedy, to all a struggle 
and a pain. How to carry this burden of life had been 
the whole world's problem. It is still the whole 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 41 

world's problem. And here is Christ's solution : " Carry 
it as I do. Take life as I take it. Look at it from 
My point of view. Interpret it upon My principles. 
Take ls\y yoke and learn of Me, and you will find 
it easy. For My yoke is easy, works easily, sits 
right upon the shoulders, and tJicj'cforc My burden 
is light." 

There is no suggestion here that religion will absolve 
any man from bearing burdens. That would be to ab- 
solve him from living, since it is life itself that is the 
burden. What Christianity does propose is to make 
it tolerable. Christ's yoke is simply His secret for 
the alleviation of human life, His prescription for the 
best and happiest method of living. Men harness 
themselves to the work and stress of the world 
in clumsy and unnatural w^ays. The harness they 
put on is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar at 
the best, they make its strain and friction past en- 
during, by placing it where the neck is most sen- 
sitive ; and by mere continuous irritation this sensi- 



42 FAX VOBISCUM. 



tiveness increases until the whole nature is quick and 
sore. 

This is the origin, among other things, of a disease 
called " touchiness " — a disease which, in spite of its 
innocent name, is one of the gravest sources of rest- 
lessness in the world. Touchiness, when it becomes 
chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposi- 
tion. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point ; con- 
ceit, with a hair-trigger. The cure is to shift the 
yoke to some other place ; to let men and things touch 
us through some new and perhaps as yet unused part 
of our nature ; to become meek and lowly in heart 
while the old nature is becoming numb from want of 
use. It is the beautiful work of Christianity every- 
where to adjust the burden of life to those who bear 
it, and them to it. It has a perfectly miraculous gift 
of healing. Without doing any violence to human na- 
ture it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with all 
surrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded 
with the fatigue and dust of the world to a new grace 



WHAT YOKES ARE EOR. 43 



of living. In the mere matter of altering the perspec- 
tive of life and changing the proportions of things, its 
function in lightening the care of man is altogether 
its own. The weight of a load depends upon the at- 
traction of the earth. But suppose the attraction of 
the earth were removed ? A ton on some other 
planet, where the attraction of gravity is less, does not 
weigh half a ton. Now Christianity removes the at- 
traction of the earth ; and this is one way in which it 
diminishes men's burden. It makes them citizens of 
another world. What was a ton yesterday is not 
half a ton to-day. So without changing one's cir- 
cumstances, merely by offering a wider horizon and 
a different standard, it alters the whole aspect of the 
world. 

Christianity as Christ taught is the truest philosophy 
of life ever spoken. But let us be quite sure when 
we speak of Christianity that we mean Christ's 
Christianity. Other versions are either caricatures, or 
exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or shortsighted 



44 



FAX VOBISCUM. 



and surface readings. For the most part their attain- 
ment is hopeless and the results wretched. But I 
care not who the person is, or through what vale of 
tears he has passed, or is about to pass, there is a 
new life for him along this path. 





Were Rest my subject, there are other 
things I should wish to say about it, and 
other kinds of Rest of which I should like 
to speak. But that is not my subject. My theme is 
that the Christian experiences are not the work of 
magic, but come under the law of Cause and Effect. 
x\nd I have chosen Rest only as a single illustration 
of the working of that principle. If there were time 
I might next run over all the Christian experiences 
in turn, and show how the same wide law applies to 
each. But I think it may serve the better purpose 
if I leave this further exercise to yourselves. I know 



46 PAX VOBISCUM. 



no Bible study that you will find more full of fruit, 
or which will take you nearer to the ways of God, 
or make the Christian life itself more solid or more 
sure. I shall add only a single other illustration of 
what I mean, before I close. 

Where does Joy come from ? I knew a Sunday 
scholar whose conception of Joy was that it was a 
thing made in lumps and kept somewhere in Heaven, 
and that when people prayed for it, pieces were 
somehow let down and fitted into their souls. I am 
not sure that views as gross and material are not 
often held by people who ought to be wiser. In 
reality, Joy is as much a matter of Cause and Effect 
as pain. No one can get Joy by merely asking for 
it. It is one of the ripest fruits of the Christian life, 
and, like all fruits, must be grown. There is a very 
clever trick in India called the mango-trick. A seed 
is put in the ground and covered up, and after divers 
incantations a full-blown mango-bush appears within 
five minutes. I never met any one who knew how 



HO IV FRUITS GROW. 47 

the thing was done, but I never met any one who 
believed it to be anything else than a conjuring-trick. 
The world is pretty unanimous now in its belief in 
the orderliness of Nature. Men may not know how 
fruits grow, but they do know that they cannot grow 
in five minutes. Some lives have not even a stalk 
on which fruits could hang, even if they did grow in 
five minutes. Some have never planted one sound 
seed of Joy in all their lives ; and others who may 
have planted a germ or two have lived so little in 
sunshine that they never could come to maturity. 

Whence, then, is joy ? Christ put His teaching 
upon this subject into one of the most exquisite of 
His parables. I should in any instance have ap- 
pealed to His teaching here, as in the case of Rest, 
for I do not wish you to think I am speaking words 
of my own. But it so happens that He has dealt 
with it in words of unusual fulness. 

I need not recall the whole illustration. It is 
the parable of the Vine. Did you ever think why 



48 I" AX VOBISCUM. 



Christ spoke that parable ? He did not merely 
throw it into space as a fine illustration of general 
truths. It was not simply a statement of the mysti- 
cal union, and the doctrine of an indwelling Christ. 
It was that ; but it was more. After He had said 
it, He did what was not an unusual thing when He 
was teaching His greatest lessons. He turned to the 
disciples and said He would tell them why He had 
spoken it. It was to tell them how to get Joy. 
" These things have I spoken unto you," He said, 
" that My Joy might remain in you and that your 
Joy might be full." It was a purposed and deliber- 
ate communication of His secret of Happiness. 

Go back over these verses, then, and you will find 
the Causes of this Effect, the spring, and the only 
spring, out of which true Happiness comes. I am 
not going to analyze them in detail. I ask you to 
enter into the words for yourselves. Remember, in 
the first place, that the Vine was the Eastern symbol 
of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad the heart of 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 49 

man. Yet, however innocent that gladness — for the 
expressed juice of the grape was the common drink 
at every peasant's board — the gladness was only a 
gross and passing thing. This was not true happi- 
ness, and the vine of the Palestine vineyards was 
not the true vine. CJirist was "the true Vine." 
Here, then, is the ultimate source of Joy. Through 
whatever media it reaches us, all true Joy and Glad- 
ness find their source in Christ. By this, of course, 
is not meant that the actual Joy experienced is trans- 
ferred from Christ's nature, or is something passed 
on from Him to us. What is passed on is His 
method of getting it. There is, indeed, a sense in 
which we can share another's joy or another's sorrow. 
But that is another matter. Christ is the source of 
Joy to men in the sense in which He is the source 
of Rest. His people share His life, and therefore 
share its consequences, and one of these is Joy. 
His method of living is one that in the nature of 

things produces Joy. When He spoke of His Joy 
4 



50 PAX VO BIS CUM. 



remaining with us He meant in part that the 
causes which produced it should continue to act. His 
followers, that is to say, by repeating His life would 
experience its accompaniments. His Joy, His kind 
of Joy, would remain with them. 

The medium through which this Joy comes is 
next explained: "He that abideth in Me, the same 
bringeth forth much fruit." Fruit first, Joy next ; 
the one the cause or medium of the other. Fruit- 
bearing is the necessary antecedent ; Joy both the 
necessary consequent and the necessary accompani- 
ment. It lay partly in the bearing fruit, partly in 
the fellowship which made that possible. Partly, that 
is to sa}^, Joy lay in mere constant living in Christ's 
) presence, with all that that implied of peace, of shel- 
ter, and of love ; partly in the influence of that Life 
upon mind and character and will ; and partly in the 
inspiration to live and work for others, with all that 
that brings of self-riddance and Joy in others' gain. 
All these, in different ways and at different times, 



HOW FRUITS GROIV. $1 

are sources of pure Happiness. Even the simplest 
of them — to do good to other people — is an instant 
and infallible specific. There is no mystery about 
Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients 
and it must come out. He that abideth in Him 
will bring forth much fruit ; and bringing forth much 
fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for Happi- 
ness, then, is to do good ; and the infallible receipt 
for doing good is to abide in Christ. The surest 
proof that all this is a plain matter of Cause and 
Effect is that men may try every other conceivable 
way of finding Happiness, and they will fail. Only 
the right cause in each case can produce the right 
effect. 

Then the Christian experiences are our own mak- 
ing? In the same sense in which grapes are our 
own making, and no more. All fruits grow — whether 
they grow in the soil or in the soul ; whether they 
are the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine. 
No man can 7nake things grow. He can get them 



52 FAX VO BIS CUM. 



to grow by arranging all the circumstances and ful- 
filling all the conditions. But the growing is done 
by God. Causes and effects are eternal arrange- 
ments, set in the constitution of the world ; fixed 
beyond man's ordering. What man can do is to 
place himself in the midst of a chain of sequences. 
Thus he can get things to grow : thus he himself 
can grow. But the grower is the Spirit of God. 

What more need I add but this — test the method 
by experiment. Do not imagine that you have got 
these things because you know how to get them. As 
well try to feed upon a cookery book. But I think 
I can promise that if you try in this simple and 
natural way, you will not fail. Spend the time you 
have spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the condi- 
tions of their growth. The fruits will come, must 
come. We have hitherto paid immense attention to 
effects, to the mere experiences themselves ; we have 
described them, extolled them, advised them, prayed 
for them — done everything but find out what caused 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 



53 



them. Henceforth let us deal with causes. " To be," 
says Lotze, " is to be in relations.'' About every 
other method of living the Christian life there is an 
uncertainty. x\bout every other method of acquiring 
the Christian experiences there is a "perhaps." But 
in so far as this method is the way of nature, it can- 
not fail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe, 
and these are "the Hands of the Livino; God." 








A^ c 




" I AM the true vine, and my 
Father is the husbandman. Every 
branch in me that beareth not fruit he 
taketh away : and every branch that bear- 
eth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more 
fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I 
have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. 
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it 
abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide 
in me. I ami the vine, ye are the branches : He that 
abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth 
much fruit : for without me ye can do nothing. If a 
man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and 
is withered ; and men gather them, and cast them into 



THE TRUE VINE. 55 



the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, 
and my word abide in you, ye shall ask what ye 
will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my 
Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit ; so ye shall 
be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so 
have I loved you : continue ye in my love. If ye 
keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love ; 
even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and 
abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto 
you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your 
joy might be full." 









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